I’d never read Flannery O’Connor until lockdown. I’d seen her listed as one of the outstanding writers of the twentieth century, specifically in terms of her short stories. I had time on my hands, so I bought her collected works.
Continue readingFlannery O’Connor Hates You
Posted in Observation, Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Dante, Flannery O'Connor, Franz Kafka, Huberty Selby Junior, Inferno, The Ramones, Virgil on March 20, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
Happy 60th Birthday, Henry Rollins
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Real Men, resistance training with tags Asylum, Cronos, Judith Herman, King Lear, Morbid Angel, Rollins Band, Slayer, The End of Silence, The Palace St Kilda, Trauma and Recovery on February 28, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
The first disturbing event of first-year university was the day I went to meet a childhood friend of mine when he was discharged from the insane asylum.
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Why I Don’t Believe in the Patriarchy (But Still Consider Myself a Feminist)
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Clementine Ford, Eurydice Dixon, feminist, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Berger, Laura Mulvey, Lisa Wilkinson, Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth, The Project, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, Ways of Seeing, Women Don't Owe You Pretty on February 19, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
2.
When Lisa Wilkinson explained on ‘The Project’ television program that Eurydice Dixon was murdered by a man who was the pointy end of a patriarchal culture which is driven to murder women as it sexualises them, I was outraged.
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Why I Don’t Believe in the Patriarchy (But Still Consider Myself A Feminist).
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory with tags Easter Bunny, Feminism, patriarchy, Santa Claus, Satan, sexual assault, Simone De Beauvoir, The Beauty Myth, The Female Eunuch, The Second Sex on February 16, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
1.
The patriarchy is like Satan, the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus. Sure, there’s some kind of cause and effect involved, but the figure itself is bought into being by those wanting to explain more subtle and complex phenomena, but are happy to settle for an easy answer with a face on it.
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‘Ashes in Your Mouth’: Spending Time in Giovanni’s Room.
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading on February 7, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
“You think,” [Jacques] persisted, “That my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.”
“Why are they – shameful?”
“Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.”
“I asked him, ‘Why?”
“That you must ask yourself,” he told me, “And perhaps one day this morning will not be ashes in your mouth.”
– James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room,
P. 49
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Surgery
Posted in Surgery with tags anaesthetic, death, Kickboxing, labral tear, Surgery on January 24, 2021 by Jarrod Boyle
I act nonchalant and brush off people’s demonstrations of care and concern, but the truth is, I fear hospital like your dog fears the vet.
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Guard Dog in the Temple of the Goddess
Posted in sonnet with tags Goddess, guard dog, temple on December 25, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
The Goddess stirs within the temple deep
Candles flicker on the sun-burnished gong
Waked by the rasping of her naked feet
I observe the enigma of the throne
With their robes and candles, their cymbals and bells
Priests conform to scripture, and its motions
Down through the dark universe of her smell
I track along instinct and devotion
Attendant and vigilant to her needs
Obedient to her hands and what they hold
Faithful to her heart and what she loves
My beating heart and her unsandalled feet
The separate, susurrant, resonant poles
That span these sun-warmed, midnight temple stones.
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‘Art With Values’.
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading, Real Men, trauma with tags Ajax, Ancient Greece, Bryan Dorries, Drama, Navy SEAL, Sophocles, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, The Rolling Stones, Theater of War, trauma on December 22, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
There’s a friend of mine, a very successful artist, who I admire very much. I met him twenty years ago when we were working together in a dirty nightclub in South Melbourne; he was collecting glasses and I was bouncing. We both aspired to art, and he hit critical pay-dirt much earlier than I (who am I fooling – I still haven’t got there).
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‘…Just Don’t Put It on the Internet.’
Posted in Pretensions toward cultural theory, Reading with tags blog, Instagram, Internet, no filter, poetry, Rainer Maria Rilke, Robert Graves, social media on December 15, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
Caveat:
This has been written to disturb you.
Invitation:
Summon your personal incarnation of this figure into your mind’s eye and look through it like a lens while you’re reading this.
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Ode to the XR6 Turbo
Posted in poetry, sonnet with tags Falcon, Ford, XR6 Turbo on December 4, 2020 by Jarrod Boyle
The tyres shrieking their demand for traction
Where the road crests the brow of the mountain
Afternoon is a golden smelter in
The crucible of the speedometer
The ceramic squeal of heated rotors
As brakes negotiate with the motor
Stark black warnings screaming from yellow signs
Driven by rhythm of white centre line
A hare, erect and startled, stands roadside
Headlights fulminate in its amber eyes
One figure riveted as sentinel
To the flipside of the other’s vigil
Iron grey dusk rears up, pure reverie
As the turbo howls like a Valkyrie
…Because every bloke should write a poem about his car.
